Egyptian actress Nadia Al Jundi, who is 64 years old, has insisted on ignoring a demand of the Egyptian Censorship Committee to delete three scenes from her upcoming television drama “Mishwar Imra'a” (A Woman’s Journey), in which she appears wearing a bikini. The censorship stressed that such scenes are not fit for television and there is no way of allowing them to pass screening, especially since the drama is scheduled for release during the upcoming Muslim fasting month, Ramadan.
Director of the series Ahmad Saqr revealed that he agrees with the censorship and added that deleting the scenes will not affect the drama in any way. On her part, Nadia stressed that she will not delete the scenes, because they do not affect anyone, and she will take the responsibility of screening them.
Problems between the two Egyptian actresses Nadia and Elham Shahin have been repeating themselves for the past two years when both women had leading roles in the movie “Al Raghba” (Desire). The dispute has been renewed recently because of the Television drama “Mishwar Imra'a” Nadia is currently working on.
The drama “Mishwar Imra'a” is being filmed these days in the media production city in Egypt and Elham says she had done the same drama but under a different name back in 1996, the drama was called “wa tabka al-ahzan” and was produced by the private sector.
The funny thing that the male leading role in both dramas was given to Egyptian actor Mustafa Fahmi who did not mention anything about the drama being repeated and he did not complain about repeating himself in both dramas. This makes everyone think that he is looking for work regardless of the subject.
A rumor during shooting of the scene says that Nadia deliberately wanted to do the same role so she can prove to all her fans that she can do the part better than Elham. Another reason was that Elham had done a drama that circles around Nadia's life and career without referring to that directly so Nadia was seeking revenge.
Al Jundi has demanded that she receives 1.5 million Egyptian pounds as her wage for her participation in “Qisat Imra’a”, which marks her first television drama series. Nadia had previously asked for the same wage for another drama series "Bint Afandina", but negotiations with the producers failed. It was stated that the wage was over the drama's budget limit, in addition to the fact that the role in the series was not appropriate for Nadia's age, reported the Kuwaiti based daily, Al Qabas. The series will be the comeback for Nadia to the small screen, which she has been away from for such a long time. -Albawaba.com
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
